I am very blessed to have Dr. Acuff as my spinal cord doctor. Last year he was outspoken in his field against Amendment 2. Now he is a member of Cures Without Cloning and speaking out in support of the CWC initiative to ban human cloning. For Dr. Acuff it’s all about the patients, about giving them hope in something real, not just a fantasy:
As a spinal-cord injury specialist, I have dedicated my career to improving the lives of my patients. Over the years, as medical research has progressed, one of the biggest challenges for physicians like me has been to bridge the gap between providing hope and providing false hope.
The new Cures Without Cloning initiative, which would amend the Missouri Constitution to prohibit human cloning and taxpayer funding of human cloning, is about hope.
It is about allowing us to focus our medical research on promising, safe methods to find lifesaving cures and treatments, but doing it without human cloning, which is dangerous, unproven and outside the mainstream of society.
Those who allege human cloning is necessary in the pursuit of these cures and treatments are providing false hope.
The Cures Without Cloning initiative would only prohibit research involving human cloning – nothing more, nothing less. There are plenty of promising research methods, including many forms of stem-cell research, that do not involve human cloning…
This isn’t a religious issue; this isn’t an economic-development issue. It’s an issue of doing what’s right for our patients; it’s about allowing medical researchers to focus on safe, proven research techniques, rather than throwing away our tax dollars.
Last week I joined Dr. Acuff in Columbia for an interview with KOMU-TV who was doing a two-sided piece on cloning and the new initiative.